16 apartments overlooking
a small park close to Tate Modern, varying from 1 bed flats to 3
bedroom rooftop apartments. Basement parking is provided and a new
nursery space takes up the ground floor area. Uniquely, the site
overlooks a neighbourhood park, and also has views north to the
city and west to the Southbank.
Its abstracted design resulted from looking carefully at its architecturally
diverse context.
The massing has been separated into 2 distinct buildings, with
the nursery at street level would enlivening the local streetscape.
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The north building
is taller and is related to the park and the south building is lower,
at the scale of local streets in the area. The composition of
2 buildings is important in breaking down the massing to clearly
express two blocks, rather than one.
At ground level, the public connection with the street is key in
relating the building to it’s context. This overtly generous
and open plan element of the building has been designed to connect
rather than create barriers.
The facade system is designed as a unified system which can respond
to differing orientations.
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Openings in it are
made at the scale of a warehouse door, as many such buildings still
remain in the area. In essence, the building could be seen as the
negative of a warehouse – the walls are transparent and the
openings are solid.
The external full height opening doors can be opened or closed
to help control the internal environment.
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The original building stood at
the corner of Baltic & Timber streets just south of Old Street. The
building has 2 duplex apartments over the upper 4 floors and a street level
office. As planning had previously been granted
for the roof extension, the form of the existing building had to be retained.
The design is an exercise in turning the corner of a typical urban block.
To do this a ‘raw’ aluminium skin was wrapped over the rendered
facade. |
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2 stage commission-
Developer commission for shell stage for sale. Purchaser commission
for fit-out, including all fitted furniture.
We saw this as our first real opportunity to fulfill
some of the architectural ideas developed earlier at a smaller scale.
The original office building was a simple floorplate of 100sqm hidden
from a small Clerkenwell side street at 1st floor level. The original
brief from Squarefoot properties was to double the floor area with
an equal sized rooftop extension.
With the opportunity of having a progressive developer
client, the shell was designed with maximum flexibility in mind,
without losing the possible of making intimate or open spaces within
the plan. The as built ‘shell’ was capable of being
fitted out in a variety of plan configurations. |
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Bearing in mind that
the building was enclosed on 3 sides, the design took full advantage
of the southerly aspect especially from the new 2nd floor.
The entire 12m long, 2nd floor elevation is of sliding/folding glazed
panels allowing the south face to ‘disappear’. There
are 2 roof terraces - an open south terrace looking back to the
City, and a smaller enclosed and intimate north terrace.
The second stage of the design followed the commission
from the purchaser to fit-out the interior. |
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Taking the opportunity
to continue the ideas of flexibility, we proposed a fold away interior
space which allowed the entire 2nd floor to become a continuous
open space or close down to become a 2 bedroom - 2 bathroom arrangement.
This was achieved using very large light weight sliding walls. When
both the walls and the south elevation are folded away, there is
very little difference between the outside and inside.
All of the fitted furniture, services and lighting
are fully integrated as part of
the design, and act as discreet lining elements to give the necessary
storage for open planning. |
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The T2 House was designed by
architect Eric Lyons in 1957 for Span Developments. The planning of
the estate where it is located is a relaxed, subtly ordered landscape
which has a pleasant blend of
practicality, sociability and aesthetics. The
Span houses themselves are of a modest scale and generally simple
in their layouts. It seems that this may be deliberate, as the full
span structure and construction allows them to be fairly easily
adjusted without complex new adjustments. |
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Bearing
in mind, these particular qualities of the open landscape and through
views we sought to reinforce and extend this through the design.
Despite being an extension of only about 3 square
metres, the ground floor was cleared to make a continuous space
with defined areas for cooking, dining and socializing. To make
an immediate connection with the back garden, a set of 4 extra large
sliding doors open up. The connection is made stronger by continuing
the timber floor from the living space out into the garden, which
is seen as an outdoor living room. |
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The original house is interesting
because it is an ‘everyday’ construction and we wanted
to achieve a continuity in this approach. However, in some of the
more ordinary internal details we did make some modest distortions
in the way they are expressed. |
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Like the majority
of London Victorian terraced houses, there is usually little garden
space to extend the existing house. It
is common for these houses to have been originally built with a
back extension and a narrow side alley. Even though the typical
house is adaptable to many differing layouts, it usually remains
a version of ‘a chain of rooms off a corridor’. To extend
on an existing extension often complicates the house further. |
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The existing kitchen
is opened up by placing all the equipment on one continuous wall/worktop
and extending this into the garden.
The side alley is glazed over to enlarge the kitchen/dining
space, and it is clad in oak, inside and outside.
The garden end of the oak then becomes a seat/table.
The doors fold away to make the kitchen and garden one continuous
space. |
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